Alphonse De Lamartine Quotes

There are places and climates, seasons and hours, with their outward circumstance, so much in harmony with certain impressions of the heart, that Nature and the soul of man appear to be parts of one vast whole.

Treason, which begins by being cautious, ends by betraying itself.

Esteem incites friendship, but not love; the former is the twin brother of Reverence; the latter is the child of Equality.

Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.

If the grandeur of the aim, the smallness of the means, the immensity of the result are the three measures of a man's genius, who would dare humanly compare a great man of modern history with Muhammad?

Shall not this bygone Eden that we knew In our Eternal Life have shape and hue? For where Time is not shall not all Time be? In that calm breast whereto our souls are cleaving Shall we not find our loved ones beyond grieving About the hearth-stone of Eternity?

Ink is the transcript of thought.

After his blood, that which a man can next give out of himself is a tear.

It is for truth that God created genius.

To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.

Ah! let us love, my Love, for Time is heartless,
Be happy while you may!

The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs.

The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror, which merely reflects objects, but of the judge, who sees, listens, and decides.

Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.

Newspapers will ultimately engross all literature.

There is a woman at the begining of all great things.

would seem as though language is the only predestination of man, and that he is created to bring it forth as his fruit. Man frets until he has given external expression to that which works within. Written language is like a mirror which it is necessary to have in order that man may know himself and be sure that he exists. So long as he does not see himself in his works he is not sure that he lives. The soul, like the body, has its ripe age.

The most effective coquetry is innocence.

It is in the habits of lawyers that every accusation appears insufficient if they do not exaggerate it even to calumny; it is thus that justice itself loses its sanctity and its respect amongst men.

Radicalism is but the desperation of logic.

Experience is the only prophecy of wise men.

Man is God by his faculty for thought.

The reason that women are so much more sociable than men is because they act more from the heart than the intellect.

Photography is better than art. It is a solar phenomenon in which the artist collaborates with the sun.

Eternity is so certain and so terrible that a thousand lives would not suffice to prepare for it.

Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas, restorer of rational dogmas, of a cult without images, the founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire: that is MUHAMMAD. As regards all the standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask IS THERE ANY MAN GREATER THAN HE?

When a dog is in your life, there is always a reason to laugh.

Yet, in these autumn days when Nature expires, Here, in these veiled scenes, I find more attractions; It is a friend's sad goodbye; it is the last smile From lips that death is going to close forever!

Mystery hovers over all things here below.

If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.

I am the fellow citizen of every being that thinks; my country is Truth.

Joy is a flame which association alone can keep alive, and which goes out unless communicated.

A conscience without God is like a court without a judge.

Poetry is the morning dream of great minds.

Republicanism and ignorance are in bitter antagonism.

Habit with it's iron sinews, clasps us and leads us day by day.

There is a name hidden in the shadow of my soul, where I read it night and day and no other eye sees it.

Too much I've seen, and felt, and lov'd in life, Living I come to seek Lethaean calm; Let me, fair scenes! forget all worldly strife, Oblivion solely is my bosom's balm.

Utopias are often just premature truths.

Silence - the applause of real and durable impressions - was broken by no one; each respected in the other the thoughts he felt to be the same as his own.

Grief and sadness knits two hearts in closer bonds that happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger than common joys.

Let us savour the swift delights of the most beautiful of our days!

What mortal is there, over whose first joys and happiness does not break some storm, dispelling with its icy breath his fanciful illusions, and shattering his altar?

Man, it seems, is not able to bear the languid rest on Nature's bosom, and when the trumpet sounds the signal of danger, he hastens to join his comrades, no matter what the cause that calls him to arms. He rushes into the thickest of the fight, and amid the uproar of the battle regains confidence in himself and his powers.

The people only understand what they can feel; the only orators that can affect them are those who move them.

Virginity is the poetry, not the reality, of life.

An artist should have more than two eyes.

And when night, guiding her bright train of stars, Throws o'er the sleeping world her gloomy veil, Lonely amidst the desert and the darkness, Musing upon the night's calm majesty; Wrapt up in quietness, with shade and silence, My soul more closely worshippeth Thy presence; With an internal day I feel enlighten'd, And hear a voice, which biddeth me to hope.

Exquisite beauty resides rather in the female form than face, where it is also more lasting.

A woman's strength is most potent when robed in gentleness.

Good manners require space and time.

If God is thy father, human beings are thy brothers and sisters.

Nature has given women two painful but heavenly gifts, which distinguish them, and often raise them above human nature,
compassion and enthusiasm. By compassion, they devote themselves; by enthusiasm they exalt themselves.

History is neither more nor less than biography on a large scale.

Man is born barbarous
he is ransomed from the condition of beasts only by being cultivated.

Civil wars leave nothing but tombs.

What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?

Life is too short to spare an hour of it in the indulgence of this evil passion.

Eloquence dwells quite as much in the hearts of the hearers as on the lips of the orator.

Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who remembers the heavens.

Brutality to an animal is cruelty to mankind - it is only the difference in the victim.

Silence and simplicity obtrude on no one, but are yet two unequaled attractions in woman.

We cannot have two hearts, one for the animals and one for men. In cruelty towards the former and cruelty to the latter there is no difference but in the victim.

Man, man, is thy brother, and thy father is God.

Unanimity is the mistress of strength.

Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and ignorance is moved to its lowest depths there appear monsters and heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue.

Poetry has been the guardian angel of humanity in all ages.

All our tastes are but reminiscences.

Time is a great ocean which, like the other ocean, overflows with our remains.

At twenty every one is republican.

I say to this night: "Pass more slowly"; and the dawn will come to dispel the night.

It is the qualities of the heart, not those of the face, that should attract us in women, because the former are durable, the latter transitory. So lovable women, like roses, retain their sweetness long after they have lost their beauty.

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.

To kill animals for the purpose of feeding on their flesh is one of the most deplorable and shameful infirmities of the human state

My dog! the difference between thee and me knows only our Creator.

Men are misers, and women prodigal, in affection.

God is only a word dreamed up to explain the world

Was in this way that the people of antiquity, when they had raised a temple on the site of one which had been torn down, always took care to introduce into the new building some of the materials, or at least a column, of the old one, in order to preserve something of the old and sacred in the modern, and in order that the souvenir, crude and worn, should have its worship and its influence over the heart, even among the master-pieces of the new sanctuary.

Religions are not proved, are not demonstrated, are not established, are not overthrown by logic! They are of all the mysteries of nature and the human mind, the most mysterious and most inexplicable; they are of instinct and not of reason.